"Bruce Sterling - The Wonderful Power of Storytelling" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sterling Bruce)

entertainment coming with things like SimEarth, they seem like a
foreshadowing of what Alvin Toffler called the "intelligent
environment"... Not "games" in a classic sense, but things that
are just going on in the background somewhere, in an attractive
and elegant fashion, kind of like a pet cat... I think this kind
of digital toy might really go somewhere interesting.

What computer entertainment lacks most I think is a sense of
mystery. It's too left-brain.... I think there might be real
promise in game designs that offer less of a sense of nitpicking
mastery and control, and more of a sense of sleaziness and
bluesiness and smokiness. Not neat tinkertoy puzzles to be
decoded, not "treasure-hunts for assets," but creations with
some deeper sense of genuine artistic mystery.

I don't know if you've seen the work of a guy called William
Latham.... I got his work on a demo reel from Media Magic. I
never buy movies on video, but I really live for raw
computer-graphic demo reels. This William Latham is a heavy
dude... His tech isn't that impressive, he's got some kind of
fairly crude IBM mainframe cad-cam program in Winchester
England.... The thing that's most immediately striking about
Latham's computer artworks -- *ghost sculptures* he calls them
-- is that the guy really possesses a sense of taste. Fractal
art tends to be quite garish. Latham's stuff is very fractally
and organic, it's utterly weird, but at the same time it's very
accomplished and subtle. There's a quality of ecstasy and dread
to it... there's a sense of genuine enchantment there. A lot of
computer games are stuffed to the gunwales with enchanters and
wizards and so-called magic, but that kind of sci-fi cod
mysticism seems very dime-store stuff by comparison with Latham.

I like to imagine the future of computer games as being
something like the Steve Jackson Games bust by the Secret
Service, only in this case what they were busting wouldn't have
been a mistake, it would have been something actually quite
seriously inexplicable and possibly even a genuine cultural
threat.... Something of the sort may come from virtual reality.
I rather imagine something like an LSD backlash occuring there;
something along the lines of: "Hey we have something here that
can really seriously boost your imagination!" "Well, Mr
Developer, I'm afraid we here in the Food Drug and Software
Administration don't really approve of that." That could happen.
I think there are some visionary computer police around who are
seriously interested in that prospect, they see it as a very
promising growing market for law enforcement, it's kind of their
version of a golden vaporware.

I now want to talk some about the differences between your art
and my art. My art, science fiction writing, is pretty new as